Author Wes Locher has teamed up with Stratics for a giveaway of his new book Braving Britannia. This book explores the history and impact of Ultima Online and includes interviews from current and past dev team members as well as many UO and Stratics community members. Click here for more details!

Male Shopkeepers: These player vendor outfits are based on Victorian shopkeeper wear and early concept sketches Denis Loubet made. They come in several outfit colors and face options. In Release 52 we will get female shopkeepers as well based on similar concepts.

Female Player Vendors: These are female versions (including different faces and outfit color variations) of the original player vendor outfit with the fur collar.

Male Player Vendors: These are male versions (including different faces and outfit color variations) of the original player vendor outfit with the fur collar.

We have replaced the placeholder harvestable trees that have been in the game since the very first prototypes with new trees that actually look like the two tree types: Pine and Maple. These trees have died or become diseased so are ideal for clearing. They can be identified by their slightly different coloration from the surrounding trees .

We also updated the tree chopping animation to better align with the trees.

New Pine:

New Maple:

Both New Trees:

The Making of South Fetid Swamp (cont.)

The South Fetid Swamp is a Tier 3 scene located on the western end of the Verdantis region. It is the site of an ancient siege and is now littered with the skeletons of soldiers, battered siege machines, and moss covered encampments. Rumors abound of treasures still hidden in the ruined keep, but the local swamp dwellers scoff at such silliness and laugh at the Outlanders who die trying to find it. Methane is known to rise from the bog on occasion, producing small fires on the surface of the water.

We have begun creating the items from the Release 49 Postmortem Telethon. The theme was once again Icy and our very own Fletcher “Scathana” Kinnear and Reid Rollo have been hard at work freezing their hands off sculpting new frozen treats for you!

Snowdragon:

Frostpipe:/jugglesnowballs:

URGENT: Confirm Your Physical Rewards Shipping Address!

We are extending the deadline to confirm your physical address to March 9, 2018.

If you are receiving physical goods as part of pledge rewards, and have not yet confirmed your physical address, please do so now.

For those who are receiving physical goods and have confirmed their physical addresses, you will receive another email from us stating the shipping address we have for you on file. At that time, please verify we have the correct address.

Thank you for your patience! We could not have made Shroud of the Avatar without your support!

Release 51 Postmortem Telethon

Greetings Avatars,

The R51 Postmortem Telethon is coming up fast on March 2 from 3-7pm CT! Starr’s birthday is also coming up (March 12), so we’re celebrating with some Darkstarr themed stretch goals! We are also expiring a bunch of items with major changes to the store immediately after the telethon including changes to crown pricing, bundle pricing, and available inventory. See the forum announcement on these changes for more details.

LIVESTREAM SCHEDULE (Central Time Zone)

Telethons are livestreamed on Twitch and include answers to your gameplay questions, world building tours, prize giveaways, sales on items, and more! Here is the schedule:

3PM: Introductions and Postmortem Q&A

3:45PM: Deep Dive 1: Combat

4:30PM: World Building Tour: New Scenes & Side Quests

5:30PM: Deep Dive 2: Physical Goods

6:15PM: Postmortem Q&A Continues

7PM: Ending Announcements

Schedule is subject to change. Check back here before the telethon begins!

As a special bonus, we are offering funding rewards to any backer that pledges a minimum of $5 for twelve hours during the day of the telethon, on March 2 from 12:00 PM to 11:59 PM CT (Spending Store Credit to make $5 minimum purchase does not apply) .

NOTE: While the livestream ends at 7pm CT, everyone will have until 11:59 PM CT to spend $5 to get the stretch goals. We will announce the final total on the following day.

$10K: /mosh (The ultimate chaotic dance!)

$25K: Darkstarr Morningstar

$35K: Darkstarr Pavers: pavers with Darkstarr symbol

$50K: Darkstarr Throne

$65K: Darkstarr Clocktower (Darkstarr loves watches!)

$80K: Darkstarr Black Chain Armor: Special chain version of the custom armor in the Darkstarr Concept painting

*Please keep in mind that stretch goal rewards take time to develop and will most likely not be available in-game until Release 53 at the earliest. We will keep you updated!

CHEER ON THE DEVS!

For every $2,500 donated, all devs on camera have to dance, sing, or perform some other act of amazement.

Additionally, we will be spinning the Wheel of Fortune! The wheel will have 12 different categories of sales plus the Lord British and Darkstarr wildcards where they get to choose any category! Each time a category comes up it will go on sale at approx. 20% off for 1 hour.

We will be giving prizes away on an hourly basis with many being given away multiple times. If you wish to win prizes during the event, be in Discord chat! We will be active on Twitch and YouTube chats as well, but they will not be our portal for prize giveaways.

SUBMIT YOUR QUESTIONS!

We will be answering questions throughout the livestream, so submit them in the comments section of the original post at this link (not this weekly update!) or on Discord chat during the event.

We know that home ownership requires a large commitment of either real dollars or in-game gold. This can be quite daunting to new players. However, our game offers other options that many players may not even be aware of, including renting from other players or even free housing offered by generous owners. We want players to be aware of all the alternative housing options besides ownership. We have already added a link to the Rental Services & Free Places to Live subforum to all housing and property deed items in the store.

Starting with Release 51, all players will start with a flier in their backpack that also links to this subforum. In Release 52 we will also add Bulletin Boards with links to this subforum in all the starting cities. Please be sure to list your rental availability and free places in that subforum so players can easily find them. We have noticed a good number of the free locations are not listed in the Rental Services subforum and are instead listed in “New Player Welcome” and therefore will not be discovered via this new method.

If you have any questions about placing your own rental ad there, or how the forum marketplace works, you can post your questions in the general marketplace forum section, or contact a community team lead like @Berek or @Cerus to help you out.

Free Trial: Choose Any Path!

With Release 50, Free Trial users can now choose any of the three paths (Truth, Love, or Courage) to start, but after selection are locked to that single path going forward. We changed this from locking them to a path that we had chosen (Courage) because we felt this misrepresented a core part of the brand of the game, which is “choice in all things” (ex. choosing your path, no classes, choose virtue/non-virtue, etc.).

Free Trial access allows you to play the entire game in any of the Online modes with a few key differences in game play. You will be able to explore hundreds of scenes, talk with thousands of players, adventure through the opening quests, and gain experience and skills as you get used to the world of New Britannia!

Here is the updated list of Visitor limits:

The term (Visitor) is appended to their character name

Max skill level set to 50

NEW! Limited to a single Story Path (Truth, Love or Courage)

Cannot purchase nor sell items via Player Vendors nor Public Vendors

No ownership of player property nor use of player property signs

Cannot move/interact with items on a player property (even if given permissions)

Cannot interact with public chests

Cannot give items to other players via Trade or Mail

Cannot flag as Open PVP

Cannot gain nor create ransom items when you kill or are killed in PVP (in Open PVP zones)

Character data may be deleted if not eventually upgraded to a paid account

In honor of the in-game craftable hanging plants as well as the Log Cabin and Hollow Log homes that went into the game for Release 50, we are putting Trees, Plants, and the Hollow Log House on sale this weekend!

Get a look at the lineup below. All of the sale items are available on the Add-On Store, and several are also available for sale on in-game Gold Crown Merchants (located in Ardoris, Central Brittany, Resolute, Aerie, and Owl’s Head):

Thank you for your interest in Portalarium! We currently have an opening in Austin, Texas for a full-time, Executive Assistant position, as described below. If you’d like to join the Portalarium Tribe, the team building the ground-breaking Shroud of the Avatar game, please submit your resume/cover letter to: [email protected]

This position starts as a full-time contract position with potential transition to full-time employee within 6-12 months. Once the transition to employee occurs, then the employee position includes company paid medical, dental, and vision through United Healthcare.

Visit the official Community Calendar to see the great lineup of activities our amazing community has planned for this weekend! And be sure to check out this month’s Release Events thread in the SotA forums for additional events.

Although the deadline to participate as a member of Team Avatars has passed, you can still show your support by making a tax-deductible donation (via this page) to the CMHN. Every bit helps and will push Team Avatars to cross that finish line!! Donate $25 or more to the CMHN and receive a Virtue Marathon 2018 in-game digital cloak! (pictured above). No need to attend the event in Austin to redeem.

Brief one paragraph description for each screenshot category. Please include as much basic detail about the location and other statistics that might be useful for others wanting to hunt the area to craft their own trophies.

Submit all screenshots in a single post response to This Forum Thread. Deadline to submit is Monday, Feb. 26 at 11:59pm CT.

Location: PaxLair Castle grounds ~ Arrive at dock, go to sign post choose Boundry #1 ~ Head down hill and make hard right ~ follow road lot is on left across from Tavern Building.

All stories should come in book form which we will want a copy of at the time to store for historic purposes. Please make sure your name is on them! To have your story read by DJ Alleine Dragonfyre on air it must be submitted to us no later than Thursday morning. The persons judged with with the best campfire stories will win prizes!

Dance music by Avatars Radio DJ. Prizes for best “sleepover” attire! Be creative and ready to show off your style! Gather round the campfire…

Founded in 1996, The Syndicate (www.LLTS.org) turned 22 years old on February 1st. As one of the founding guilds in our SOTA community, The Syndicate is the Guinness World Record holder for the longest, continuously operating guild. Their online gaming presences host more than 1,200 members with many of them having been a part of the community for 10 to 20 years or more.

Annually they host SyndCon where several hundred members get together for 5 days. We at Portalarium have attended for the past several years and there is never a shortage of questions, comments and ideas about Shroud of the Avatar. In fact, the idea for the dragon statue that you can buy from the online store and even the very earliest concepts of player run towns came out of SyndCon.

The Syndicate stands out as the progenitor to what modern guilds have become. Since their founding, almost 100 million other guilds have come and gone yet they have found some kind of secret sauce to keep their presence alive and they are not shy about helping other communities tweak their formula for success when asked.

Within Shroud you may find The Syndicate in their capital city of Arx Draconis, or in one of their surrounding towns.

Did You Know: All Creatures Have Vulnerabilities!

Avatars! This is Elgarion from @SotAHelp with a regular “Did You Know?” feature. Expect to see these posted regularly on community channels, and here in the weekly update!

Did you know creatures in @ShroudofAvatar oft feature vulnerabilities to certain attack types? Undead are vulnerable to Sun and Life Magic yet resistant to Death Magic! Which of your encounters revealed such fantastical oddities, Avatar?
​

For future weekly updates, we will be rotating these Did You Knows with the Getting Started Videos and other community How-To posts. If you have a tip to share, please send them to Berek!

Recommended Projects to Support – Wasteland 3

Our friends over at inXile are well on their way to developing Wasteland 3! The game is a party-based role-playing game with complex story reactivity and strategic combat. It also features an engaging story utilizing a newly-revamped dialog tree system from Torment: Tides of Numenera!

By including vehicles, environmental dangers, and a revamped action system, inXile is evolving on Wasteland 2’s deep tactical turn-based combat and unique encounter design. Play solo or with a friend in story-driven synchronous or asynchronous multiplayer. Choices open or close off mission opportunities, areas to explore, story arcs, and lots of other content.

Stratics is the oldest continually running MMORPG Fansite on the Internet. Founded in 1997 Stratics has served the Ultima Online Community for 18 years. We strive to provide the most complete social experience for Ultima Online players.